'Transparent' Flash

When it comes to mission-critical data that must be available around the clock, a disaster-proof configuration is an absolute must to keep web stores trading, transaction databases available, and virtual machines up-and-running. Flash arrays can provide the performance needed for such applications, but without the benefit of 100 percent business continuity. Until now, both such configurations are usually only available in conjunction with upper midrange and enterprise systems, commonly out of the price range of most businesses, and so complex that many IT organizations don’t feel comfortable managing these intricate environments. So, wherever possible, they simply avoid them – putting their businesses and reputation at risk.

With ‘F’ signifying flash, the ETERNUS DX200F immediately resolves all the performance issues in business-critical applications without the need for complicated tuning. The latest addition to the ETERNUS DX Business Centric Storage family uses the same popular management system, enabling high interoperability and simplified management. The all-flash array is a preconfigured system equipped with 5-24 solid-state disks (SSDs) delivering up to 38.4 TB of total capacity. SSDs can increase speed by a factor of 100 or more and they considerably outperform hard disks, especially when it comes to data latency which can be a real issue for the most demanding business applications.

Bernhard Brandwitte, Vice President Global Storage Business at Fujitsu, says: “The FUJITSU Storage ETERNUS DX200F is the right choice for performance hungry applications thus ensuring fastest application response times and satisfied users. Unlike very expensive all-flash array solutions based on proprietary system architectures with purpose built flash components, the ETERNUS DX200F leverages the high-performance architecture of the ETERNUS DX RAID storage series and the cost advantages of standard SSD’s. As already proven by storage industry benchmarks1 this combination delivers market-leading application acceleration at a far lower cost level.”

Whereas many all-flash systems deliver only limited high availability and disaster recovery, the ETERNUS DX200F supports the synchronization of data between two systems. By using the ETERNUS Storage Cluster functionality, a transparent system failover can be configured that enables users to combine all-flash performance with complete disaster resilience, which is currently unique in today’s market.

The failover to the surviving system or the secondary site takes place automatically during a disaster, with full transparency to the hosts and application, and without the need of intervention by system administrators. All application access is maintained in real-time, while all systems in the high-availability environment can be run productively during normal standard operations. It also supports manual failover, which helps in case of planned power shutdowns, disaster recovery tests and non-disruptive upgrades.